Global warming is a crockFollow

Well ######, it seems we're gonnna differ on this one. i've just spent far too much time on looking at sooo many web pages and articles on this. And where do I find myself now? I'm still totally unconvinced that ozone depletion/ global warming have anything to do with the activities of man.

I've read loads of science from both sides of the argument with the purpose of convincing myself one way or another that there IS something going on. And I've failed. (to convince myself, that is). As far as I can tell, there are and always have been fluctuations in the systems of this planet. Until very recently we have had very little ability to measure these fluctuations. Now that we are becoming able to take meaningful measurements of some of the processes going on around us, we (some ) are busy jumping to conclusions about all sorts of data that may or may not mean anything.

Measuring so called holes in the ozone layer, for 20 or 30 years and finding that they have moved around a bit and seasonaly change density and position, doesn't PROVE anything (not to me anyway, maybe it does to you and lots of others, it would seem). Planet earth has been here for 4.55 billion years and seems to have gotten by just fine without 'us' to fret about her. Why should she suddenly be having all these problems now?

I just don't get it.

I don't think that I'm gonna be able to change your mind and thats not my intention, but there are some things that just don't add up to me.... Scientific American , 9/89 says that man releases about 6 billion tons of CO2 into the atmos. per year, or 2.9% of total. Non-human activities (forest fires, volcanoes and the oceans) release about 200 billion tons(97.1%) Co2 is the main culprit (apparently) as a 'greenhouse gas'.

The Earths atmos. is at an average pressure of 14.7 lbs. per square inch.The Earts surface area is roughly 200 million square miles. Weight of atmosphere is about 6 thousand trillion tons. In 1950, content of CO2 was 0.04 %.. by weight wich is about 2400 billion tons. In 1996, the CO2 was 0.06% of the atmosphere or about 3600 billion tons. On these figures, massive as they are, I just can't make the connection between our piddly 6 billion tons and impending global catastrophy.

I would worry about the environment and global warming and pollution and rising sea levels (i AM a surfer, and probably spend 10 to 15 hours a week actually in the sea), but I'd like to think that my finite reserves of worry energy are being directed at the things that really need to be worried about...Nuclear pollution, genuinly avoidable illnesses, such as the impending health and environmental disaster bought on by the western, meat 3 times a day sugar diet and even the loss of habitat availiable for the lesser spotted custard parrot of matabeleland. At least we can, do something about these things. The atmosphere ? Methinks it will look after itself.

with respect....

Ocean cooling caused by the volcanic eruption of Krakatoa in 1883 kept sea level worldwide in check well into the 20th century, a new analysis suggests.

When the Indonesian volcano exploded, it hurled immense amounts of ash and other particles into the stratosphere. For up to 2 years, those aerosols blocked about 1 percent of the sunlight that had previously reached Earth, says Peter J. Gleckler, an atmospheric scientist at Lawrence Livermore (Calif.) National Laboratory. The resulting decrease in absorbed radiation caused the upper layers of the oceans to cool and contract. Worldwide, sea level dropped.

Gleckler and his colleagues used modern oceanographic data to confirm the accuracy of six computer models that consider the effects of volcanic aerosols and other factors on Earth's oceans. On average, those models suggest that, between 1955 and 1998, sea level rose about 1.7 centimeters because of the warming of ocean waters, the researchers note in the Feb. 9 Nature.

Applying those models to look farther back in time, the team detected a drop in sea level after the eruption of Krakatoa. In fact, even though the oceans were gradually warming because of changes in Earth's climate, sea level wouldn't have returned to its pre-Krakatoa height until around 1950, says Gleckler.

Thanks to rapidly rising concentrations of greenhouse gases, the heat content of Earth's oceans is increasing much faster today than it did early in the 20th century. The models suggest that the drop in sea level caused by the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo, which lofted a comparable amount of aerosols as Krakatoa did, lasted only a decade or so.

What mankind is doing is liberating carbon from beneath the Earth's surface and putting it into the atmosphere, where it is available for conversion into living organisms